


to hold us in the great hands of life

by fruitwhirl



Category: Brooklyn Nine-Nine (TV)
Genre: F/M, one of those "otp through outsider pov" type fics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 14:21:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,163
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12772890
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fruitwhirl/pseuds/fruitwhirl
Summary: It’s not until they’re all at Shaw’s, celebrating Peralta’s solve of that nearly decades-old case with just a scant of evidence, and the man-child of a detective Terry's always known him to be is decidedly not acting like the slightly jerky show-off he normally is after something this big. But instead he’s quiet, downbeat, and if Terry didn’t know better, he’d even say pensive. And when he finds out why—his gaze slipping to the detective currently sipping a beer and laughing with her boyfriend from the seven-eight—he mentally chides himself for not thinking of that sooner (considering that when he looks back on it, he’ll remember the light teasing and almost flirty sort of competition and the smiles they’ll flash at each other when they think the other isn’t aware).Jake and Amy, through the eyes of one Sergeant Terry Jeffords.





	to hold us in the great hands of life

**Author's Note:**

> this was literally not proofread in the slightest and it has maybe one line of dialogue sorrrryyyy
> 
> title from "why i wake early" by mary oliver. great poet she makes me cry a lot ok.

For all his height and taut muscles and “ass that just won’t quit” (as Gina likes to put it), Terry is rather soft and perhaps a little motherly, especially when it comes to his employees. Because in truth, over the past decade, he’s grown to know his detectives like the back of his hand, and wouldn’t want it any other way.

While Boyle may seem to be deceptively open about anything and everything that’s important to him, it’s the little things that Terry thinks he catches. When stressed, the small man grows colder much faster, and will raid the cardboard box (that Terry is sure housed a toaster-oven at one point) that serves as their lost-and-found for whatever outerwear he can find, tending toward choosing overly large and pea-colored argyle sweaters. And sometimes, Boyle will barrel into the bullpen a few minutes late, and the sergeant will know that based on his gait, he had to go to Nikolaj’s school, or maybe that his bus was late, or any myriad of other reasons. He even vividly remembers how Boyle and Peralta became friends, when the former decided that they’d be “besties” for life (which, if he recalls correctly, has to do with baked macaroni and cheese, the _Mission Impossible_ franchise, and a foam ball).

Gina, though not technically _his_ employee—being the captain’s civil administrative assistant, after all—is basically one of his employees, considering. As much as she tries to act other-worldly and eccentric at all times, he knows her lunch order at her favorite bodega on the corner that he swings by when she’s pregnant and complaining about the food she brought and doesn’t want to move because she’s _carrying another human in her body, dammit._ Terry knows that she grew up with Peralta and she regards him as a brother-figure in a way that Boyle is not (no matter how much he tries), and that she has memorized his social security number for him just in case of emergency.

Even the hot-tempered Diaz, who uses almost every ounce of her being to keep her private life _private,_ Terry is well aware not only of her past as a Catholic ballerina, but also of the way she likes her coffee (not her standard dark roast that she’ll let someone get her—no, the frivolous drink she pretends she doesn’t love: a strawberry “cherry blossom” frappuccino with a mountain of whipped cream) and how the way she scratches her thumb when she’s a nervous sort of worried, especially when it comes to non-work related matters (such as the moments after Pimento leaves and she’s defeated, convinced that he’s cheating on her, and she tries to mask her pain with anger). Although she’ll never admit it, he knows of her soft spot for the bundle of energy that is Santiago, and she’s even left clues around the precinct about where her apartment is in the event that she’s actually chained to her deathbed with handcuffs and someone needs to feed Arlo.

And he knows his two best detectives (well, one will be a fellow sergeant as soon as the exam results come back) the best out of all of them, he thinks.

Santiago has seven older brothers, a majority of whom are on the force in some capacity or another, but she’s closest to Rafael (she’ll call him “Rafe” over the phone at three in the morning after a particularly long shift, especially during her first few weeks at the precinct when she was stressed and still uncertain of her position), who is thirteen months older than her and is a florist with a shop in Soho—Terry’s ordered arrangements for his wife before and was rather pleased. But it’s why sometimes there will be a delivery of colorful snapdragons on the young detective’s desk and her mood will be infinitely lifted. Terry also knows each of her tells—and he and Diaz have had lengthy discussions over what exactly her double-tuck means (and years ago, what it meant when she did it around Jake). The severity of her bun often compensates for the lack of height if she forgoes her clunky boots in the morning, which indicates a poor night of sleep (she doesn’t like wobbling on her stilts). He inadvertently knows her favorite stationary store as well as her secret shame-smoking spot and which drawer she keeps cereal bars in because “candy bars aren’t real food, Jake.” Her preferred post-it notes are a highlighter pink, she took Latin in high school because she claims that the language “isn’t really that dead,” and her full name is actually _Aimelis_ , not _Amelia_ like she likes to tell people.

And then there’s Jake Peralta, who is simultaneously one of his most trusted friends (godfather to his youngest) and one of his pseudo-children. Honestly, Terry probably knows _too_ much about him, from his weekend habits—before dating Amy, it was mainly getting drunk on Saturday nights, eating an abundance of takeout (he’s been on the receiving end of the inebriated Thai food texts) and marathoning _Die Hard;_ and after, it’s probably still the same, except Terry doesn’t worry as much about him now—to the twenty-two books he’s read (one of which being the Thorp novel that is favorite movie series is based off of, _Nothing Lasts Forever)_ , to how he uses humor to veil the fact that he has a lot of abandonment issues and, like, _actual_ adult feelings.

He thinks that they’ve almost always complemented each other in one capacity or another, a sort of yin and yang. It’s why he ignored their initial month or three of bickering over individual work styles and personalities and good God, how much could two people argue _that much_ over the correct way to staple paperwork? As sergeant, Terry’s job is to keep the precinct running, so when the two start closing cases together nearly faster than they can be assigned, he’s grateful. Yeah, they still fight like cats and dogs more often than not, but it’s more lighthearted now and they seem to balance each other out, Santiago matching Peralta’s cocky headfirst approach with a sense of practicality, or him getting her to loosen up, just a little.

It takes seventeen months before he starts to wonder if they’ll ever act on whatever seems to be going on between them—but then again, Peralta’s just so childish and terrified of commitment in comparison to Santiago’s straight-laced and organized nature, so Terry doesn’t give it that much thought, especially when their bet boosts productivity for the both of them. He briefly finds humor (and maybe secondhand embarrassment for Santiago) when he parades her around the crowded bar and forces her to dance the Titanic jig with Hitchcock, but with a too-honest Boyle and angry wife on his plate, he doesn’t give them much mind.

It’s not until they’re all at Shaw’s, celebrating Peralta’s solve of that nearly decades-old case with just a scant of evidence, and the man-child of a detective he’s always known is decidedly not acting like the slightly jerky show-off he normally is after something this big. But instead he’s quiet, downbeat, and if Terry didn’t know better, he’d even say _pensive._ And when he finds out why—his gaze slipping to the detective currently sipping a beer and laughing with her boyfriend from the seven-eight—he mentally chides himself for not thinking of that sooner (considering that when he looks back on it, he’ll remember the light teasing and almost flirty sort of competition and the smiles they’ll flash at each other when they think the other isn’t aware). He’s always prided himself on being an expert on romance, after all. And because of his expertise, or lack thereof, he determines that the best course of action will be for the boy to get drunk and sing more karaoke than either of them ever imagined was possible.

Now, Terry _loves_ love, and he loves his detectives, but he definitely does _not_ love having to deal with possibly awkward situations at work but honestly (thankfully, really), he doesn’t see much of a difference in how they interact, aside from the occasional soft glance from Jake, or the way he grows quiet, practically clams up, when the aforementioned boyfriend is mentioned or makes an appearance. Santiago doesn’t seem to notice, though.

And then, Jake ends up being fired so that he can go undercover with the mob for six months, and while he expects Santiago to be a tad worried just like the rest of them—or more so, really, because it’s _Santiago_ , who has anxiety and sometimes obsesses over things like this a little excessively—he’s still surprised by how… _discombobulated_ she is, especially for the first few months of her partner’s stint. Terry wonders, idly, if he’d told her of his feelings, but then remembers Peralta’s fear of adult feelings and figures that the kid would probably jump off a cliff before admitting his infatuation for her.

When the detective comes back, Terry’s assumption is confirmed by how Peralta and Santiago seem to interact almost just the same as before—a little flirty if you squinted the right way, while still continuing to be that weird mix of supportive and competitive that they’ve always seemed to embody when it comes to each other.

And then, Jake’s dating a woman (who turns out to be a defense attorney and honestly, Terry wants to hate her solely for that fact) and Santiago’s still with that guy from the seven-eight and the two are working together better than ever before.

(Until, of course, they go up to transport that prisoner and Santiago comes back single. Terry doesn’t know why.)

After Sophia breaks up with Jake and consequently breaks his heart because it’s definitely the first time he’s ever told a woman that he loves her, the seasoned sergeant decides that he just probably shouldn’t get emotionally invested in his detectives’ respective love lives. And that’s fine, until a few months later, when the new captain’s here and he’s skimming through the arrest report of the prolific identity thief, Michael Augustine, and comes across the clipped, typed words—“Det. Peralta and Det. Santiago engaged in public displays of affection to keep their cover as a couple intact”—and he can’t himself from sidling over to Diaz in the break room and asking her what exactly happened, only to receive a pair of eyes rolling and a gruff “just middle school level type stuff.” He sighs a breath of relief, even if a small part of him hoped briefly that it was at least like, high school hallway level type stuff.

Honestly, the thought doesn’t even cross his mind until after _the new captain dies_ and he mentions pulling the security tapes of the evidence locker and his two best cops turn pale as ghosts and admit that they were in there “snorking,” whatever that means (he really hopes it just means kissing because he does _not_ want to sanitize that entire room).

Internally, Terry loves that the two have gotten together even with the Vulture in the way, but as a father of two beautiful twin girls with another child on the way, he doesn’t really devote much brainpower to it, except when Santiago wins the heist that year out of pure pettiness, spurred by Jake’s previous dismissal of her that was definitely uncalled for. And then, there’s the whole mattress situation he never quite understands, but he has his hands full with Diaz’s “little brother,” and when he sees the two detectives holding hands and laughing later, he breathes a sigh of relief.

When Ava is born and the squad is all there for her birth, he lets Jake be the first out of their little work-family to see and hold the precious bundle of joy, and it’s not until later that Santiago slips (followed by her boyfriend with a few seconds) and asks a little meekly if she can hold her. And for the six years he’s known Amy Santiago, he’s never seen her so _calm._ It’s not like she innately knows how to act around an infant or anything, considering he knows that she has a multitude of nieces and nephews, but she’s just soft and quietly holding her against the light pink of her blouse.

(Terry pretends not to see how Jake’s eyes soften when he looks at the both of them.)

In all honesty, he expects a blow up to come at some point, but it just doesn’t and for that, he’s glad. He’s witness to how, after they’ve arrested the armed thieves at the store on Christmas Eve, Santiago launches herself into her _Die Hard-_ loving boyfriend’s arms in a very uncharacteristic display of public affection—Diaz grunts next to him that the girl who brings blankets to outdoor events during the summer just ran into the freezing river. That might explain it.

He watches as Santiago internally (and externally) stresses about meeting Mrs. Peralta, and then when he’s glancing through the report done on Santiago’s time in the women’s prison, he sees how Jake must have freaked out himself, as his partner has a tendency to immerse herself in undercover roles.

He’s privy to just how lost Santiago is while Jake and Holt are put under witness protection and booted off to Florida (she didn’t just lose her partner and captain, but also her boyfriend and mentor respectively), and he thinks that that’s the point where he starts referring to her as Amy more often; he knows how much she wants the approval of authority, and he doesn’t just see her as an inferior, but as a friend. She spends enough time at the precinct, putting in massive amounts of overtime in an effort to bring Figgis down, and enough time at his house, when Sharon insists on having her over for dinner.

And then they reunite, and it’s awkward, but by the time they’re back on the road again for Brooklyn—the pair decides to ride along with Terry, as he refuses to ride with the entirety of the squad—he glances up at the rearview mirror to see the pair. Tucked away in the back seat of his mini-van with his injured leg stretched across her lap, talking quietly and they both just seem so happy to be in each other’s presence. He turns up his Kidz-Bop CD to give them a little more privacy.

The next year proceeds like this: the two decide to move in together, and it’s while they’re literally arresting an escaped convict in the _sewers_ that Jake realizes that his girlfriend is totally right and that he loves her lot and that he wants to move into _her_ apartment (Terry’s surprised he gives in so easily, but maybe he shouldn’t have been so shocked). One Saturday morning he agrees to help them move _one,_ because Amy could only stand one, of Jake’s ridiculous massage chairs, as well as some miscellaneous stuff. He watches them joke around together, bumping hips and singing along to Taylor Swift songs when they seem to forget that he’s here.

It’s sometime after the squad saves the precinct, or rather _Gina_ saves the precinct, that he starts to wonder whether or not Jake is in it for the long haul. Almost immediately he disregards that notion, because as goofy as the guy can be sometimes, he’s grown up quite a bit since he started at the 9-9 so many years ago, and he doesn’t think he could ever imagine Jake and Amy being anything other than _JakeandAmy._ Yeah, they seem a little overwhelmed and unprepared when it comes to babysitting his twin girls, and sure, he nearly chokes when Cagney asks for “orgasm juice” before school the next morning, but he gets a little smile on his face when he sees his two detectives excitedly talking about how cute kids are. And then there’s the fact that when he’s tucking his children into bed, Lacey can’t going on and on about how much they “love Aunt Amy and Uncle Jake” and how they’re _feminists_ now.

It’s sometime after Amy takes the sergeants exam (and presumably _rocks_ it) and after Jake laments about failing at trivia _again,_ that Terry decides that he should maybe start pushing him towards proposing because he _loves_ his work-kids, so he devises several analogies for marriage—one that he is particularly proud of involves vanilla and blueberry yogurt.

Just as he thinks he’s gotten through with his detective, both Jake and Diaz get arrested for _bank robbery_ and they all pool together to pay the steep bail, and then the next two months consist of trying to find ways to prove their innocence. And then they _lose,_ and it’s because Terry couldn’t reach the two of them in time, and his heart breaks when he swings by the precinct late that night to speak with Holt and he sees the lone figure of Amy sitting on one of the benches in an empty hall, gaze fixed on her clasped hands in her lap, her purse beside her.

He calls her name softly, and when she doesn’t respond, he raises his voice, repeating it until she looks up. Her eyes are glassy, her nose red, and it takes Terry a moment to make the connection that she’s been crying. In one fluid movement, he sets himself on the wood next to her, and she leans into his shoulder, her breath catching with sobs as he rubs circles against the plane of her back.

(As much as she hurt during the sixth months Jake was in WITSEC, Terry realizes that this time, she can’t be sure that he’s safe, and now, she doesn’t even have Diaz to talk to—she’s the only one who’s ever been to the now incarcerated detective’s new apartment, and during that half year, Amy had her as a sounding board. Now, though, she doesn’t have anyone and it breaks his heart.)

She ends up spending the next few nights flitting between his couch and Holt’s, because she can’t handle being back in the apartment she share with Jake, and he ends up going to South Carolina with her to visit Jake and Diaz the first time, except they don’t get to see the latter because of some sort of riot that broke out in the prison yard. But he sits on the cold metal bench in the men’s prison as she hugs Jake with every ounce of her being for the thirty seconds they’re allotted, and he watches as the other man can’t stop smiling.

The next eight weeks consist of long nights spent at the precinct whenever he knows that his girls are taken care of (Sharon, while not happy with the lack of time she gets with her husband, understands the severity of the situation and simply kisses his cheek when he gets home well past midnight), and then when Amy isn’t at work, she’s avoiding the apartment, so she ends up babysitting Cagney and Lacey often, claiming that she “has to repay Terry somehow.”

And then they take down Hawkins, and Terry _revels_ in the way Holt berates her even if the chess metaphor is a little lengthy, and when he gets to see the free Jake and Diaz at the bar the next day, he can’t stop smiling. He also can’t help but notice the way Jake and Amy’s hands linger on each other, how they never seem to stray from arms’ length and keep in nearly constant contact. He catches how when they leave work now, Amy’s less rigid about public displays of affection, and she’ll press her lips against her boyfriend’s forehead when he’s perched on the edge of her desk, she’ll be the one to lace their fingers together as they move to the elevator, and once or twice she’ll wrap him in a tight embrace when she thinks the precinct is empty.

The week before Halloween—and thus, the week where he and Diaz and Boyle meet to make sure their plan for winning is well-underway—he’s offered a suspiciously large amount of yogurt by his captain and the couple, but he figures that he’s spent enough time with his kids and if he dies from eating poisoned yogurt, he’d be okay with that as a way to go.

Yes, he’s a little miffed that the tramps’ plan was thwarted, and he’s not entirely sure of the logistics, but he can’t stay mad, really, because Jake and Amy are _engaged_ because _he_ gave Jake the idea to propose (when okay, he didn’t and it was instead just Amy being herself, but Terry will continue to believe that he was the source of inspiration). Terry’s even a little devastated for them when they later announce that they lost their venue to the Vulture, and briefly considers beating the man up himself, but the way they smile at each other and say that they’d marry each other regardless of location, well, it makes him want to call up Sharon and tell her how much he loves her.

Which he actually ends up doing, by the way.

The rest of the engagement, he thinks, goes smoothly, with Amy taking the reins with Jake happily following behind her (Terry actually ends up tagging along on the search for the perfect wedding dress, and he can’t stop crying when she starts crying over a simple empire-waist gown with a lace bodice and Diaz punches him for crying but he swears that she’s got tears in her eyes too).

The bachelor party ends up turning into a combined shin-dig with the bachelorette party into a Jimmy Jabs style game, with a series of competitions that includes making the most disgusting, expensive drink from the bar—a game that depends heavily on taste and resulted in Diaz and Boyle getting _wasted_ —as well as a game of the newly-weds except Jake is paired up with Gina and Terry ends up with Amy and Boyle with Diaz, and well, Terry _always_ wins.

The wedding itself actually takes place at the public recreation center in Staten Island, and honestly, Amy made the place as beautiful as she could, and it’s right when everyone is about to file in that the lights go out suddenly and when they flicker back on, Holt is gone from his post beside Jake as the officiant, and the entire venue erupts into chaos.

They get a call from _Seamus Murphy_ of all people who explains that their captain cheaped him out on _a favor,_ to which Amy grows pale when she hears, and the next twenty-four hours consist of following the mob boss’s instructions specifically to rescue Holt from the gross basement of some place in Harlem and it’s quite a sight, Jake and Amy clutching a bruised Holt in their arms in a grimy, dimly-lit room as she stands in her slightly tattered dress and they in their tuxes.

It’s a few hours later, when they’ve all gotten some sleep but they don’t know where Murphy is and Terry ends up at Jake and Amy’s apartment to grab the detective (who is still wearing her wedding dress, as she seems to just have fallen asleep the moment she reached her couch) and take her to an abandoned building, under the guise of a new lead on Murphy’s location (which in reality, they knew he was stuck in a dumpy jail cell in Brooklyn), and once they climb too many stairs to reach the roof, which is dotted with candles and fairy lights against the dark of the New York night, and the entire squad’s there and Terry’s not sure if he’s the one crying or if it’s Jake—though it’s probably the both of them—and under the stars he sees his two best detectives marry.

(Amy hyphenates, but Jake exasperates everyone by insisting on being called “Detective Santiago,” until Diaz writes it on his forehead in frustration.)

Someday soon, he’ll figure out that Amy is pregnant when she grabs for her cigarettes before suddenly throwing the pack across the precinct, and he’ll watch in humor with Diaz as Amy tries to keep it from Jake, who also somehow knows but doesn’t know if his wife knows and the entire time, Gina is dropping hints about the pregnancy to Boyle and Holt who just don’t seem to understand it. Seven months later, he’ll stand in the waiting room at Brooklyn Methodist until Jake stumbles out of the delivery area to announce, his voice raw, that Isabella Rachel Peralta has been born (her mother trying to beat the record for shortest time in labor and failing) and she and the mother are happy and healthy and awake.

Terry will glance at the new family in the tiny hospital room and will know, that without a doubt, that little girl will have the best parents in the world.


End file.
